New Registration Process: Quantity vs Quality

The new registration system has clearly increased the incidence of abusive behaviour in SL - however, there might be some valid points in favour of the new registration system.

The problem is - it is now extremely difficult to ban someone from your areas permenently, likewise, LL is apparently having difficulty with keeping people out after they have been banned. The result of this is, even if LL are able to ban effectively, the perception is there that you can just register another account in five minutes.

But - the new registration system is bringing in hoards of new (legitimate) players, Ben (I think) Linden said a few days after the change, that the main page gets 50,000 new unique visitors per day; but prior to the change in registration, only a paltry number were actually signing up.

A large population base, is no doubt going to be a key factor in SL's future - the bigger the userbase, the more staff LL can afford to hire, the better SL becomes. The problem is, balancing it with the increased rate of abuse that anonyminity brings.

I would like to propose a left-field solution to the problem, - as SL grows (for better or worse) closer to the model that the internet itself uses, it's time to decentralise abuse management in a similar manner.

That is, offer the ability to fully restrict parcel access in more complex and detailed ways; such as.

- Objects owned by a banned user are automatically returned upon entry into the parcel.
- Greater information & control over bans (such as IP bans, MAC address bans, including wildcards)
- Ability to block display of the parcel for banned users (they see a empty parcel, and are unable to enter)
- Global ban lists (the ability to share one ban list between all your parcels)
- Optional accountability (certify in profile if a user has valid billing information)

Thoughts?

The more the merrier

Shareable ban lists. Ability for, as an example, me to subscribe to Adam's public ban list.

(sigh) ... Feel like all my work on *just this* in the past was wasted breath - whenever I posted on just this issue I was told by folks in the forums that there was 'no need'.

(see following- )
/139/bc/108565/1.html
/139/3c/107875/1.html
/139/09/112166/1.html

Just kinda a bit of a chagrin that people are now saying "HEY WE REALLY NEED THIS STUFF!" ... yeah. No kidding.

Those three links should sum up my thoughts on the matter... I guess it's good that the issue is finally being taken seriously.

If it is, I suppose.

folks can look at the responses for themselves, and draw their own conclusions.

I wholly disagree with this new registration system. I think it's a terrible idea. Sure it sounds exciting if we see "explosive population growth", but I think it's better to grow at a steady rate.

If we are forced to keep this new signup system, I would like to see these new account separated from normal users.

So, suppose we have a unvalidate accounts, but we allow them to submit identification/credit cards later on to become verified. So until you get verified you get a big "UNVERIFIED USER" on top of your name in-world.

As an additional restriction, I'd love it if unverified users couldn't accept L$ - can't tag things for sale, can't be paid any money. That would pretty much remove the ability of scammers to use free accounts to commit fraud.

So anyone just casually interested in SL can still browse the tools and see what SL's all about without having to actually register.

I'd also love it if we could auto-ban unverfied accounts from our parcels and disallow unverfied accounts from IMing us so we don't have to deal with griefing.

Your 'Unverified Account' sounds alot like an Active Worlds 'Tourist' account. And to give the 'Tourists' a taste of things, they could build and script only in Linden-sanctioned sandboxes.

The problem with that was - it really wasnt an incentive to upgrade, more 'this sucks, I cant do anything, I'm leaving'. I dont think Tourists worked well - if your restricting free accounts, the restrictions should be divided at a point of convenience rather than core functionality. (Pay and get convenience XYZ, priority logins/teleports, or something like that.)

Yeh, it was only a suggestion. Obviously the objective is to get lots'n'lots of people signed up and staying in SL. But how to do that and filter out the potential troublemakers? That was why I like the idea of the unverified accounts having limited object/script creation as well as limited financial transaction capacity. If they like what they see, then US$10 (for a basic account) and a few scraps of RL info shared between them and LL shouldn't be *that* much of a disincentive.

I'm not sure if restricting people to the sandboxes is a good idea - there are many ways to enjoy SL that don't involve scripting or building.

As for paying - I liked the last version of SL's idea of "your first account is free". I think that significantly lowered the barrier of entry to SL - if you try SL, and you decide it's not for you, it costs you nothing.

I simply think there should be a good incentive to tie your account to a RL identity, to reduce griefing, and to ease the process of finding accountability when there is fraud. I'm happy enough to see the new accounts seeing the same priority of login and convenience of access as the rest of us, I'd just like their ability to ruin someone else's day removed until they can be made accountable for it.

There's safety in numbers. Let em all in!

For sure, Francis. I'm all for the unverified accounts being able to explore the length and breadth of SL. Putting a few limits on them in terms of what and where they can create objects/scripts and some limitations on their financial transactions (such as not being able to cash out their L$ / US$ balance) might give them an incentive to step up to, at minimum, a US$10 basic account.

Easy way to raise cash and verify accounts, no sex animations will work for a non-resident. Period.

Actually, disabling scripts in general for unverified accounts sounds like a really good idea thinking about it.

Great ideas, Adam - I'm strongly in favor of them.

As I posted in another thread, I think its inevitable that registration will need to be laxed.

But a pre-req for that happening is a strong set of tools to help prevent abuse before it starts.

In addition to the ideas you raised, I'd say allow us to 'subscribe' to each other's ban lists. Say I want to merge the ban lists from NCI & Luskwood with mine - that'd make it easy, and would prevent the types of attacks where griefers 'make their rounds'.

Additionally, it could allow store owners to pool their ban lists - so that something like the recently talked about incident with fake store managers could never get off the ground in the first place.

Yeah, I'd like to see people getting into SL without even having to register. Just log on and go.

That being said, better banning tools are clearly necessary.

I'm all for opening the floodgates to the unwashed masses to get everyone in here.

But only if we, the residents, get proper tools to bounce people away from our stuff without getting banned ourselves.

It's annoying enough throwing people off your plot once or twice, but I mean, come on, the amount of abuse reports being reported on the forum is ridiculous. Scams, PvP abuse, flagrant teengrid shit, and so on.

Yes, this is the Great Wide Intarweb, folks. Welcome to humanity.

*Goes back to the private sim he's in, locks the door, and doesn't come out*

Perhaps we could set our islands or parcels to "only people with billing info allowed".

Adam, don`t you feel this is one heck of a PH.D Final case study for someones degree.We are all puppets in the game. But we don`t know whos case study this is.......

Being able to have more people on the banlist would be nice too.


But seriously, being able to ban users on an IP/MAC basis (much as is done in IRC channels) would be ace. In fact, adding that one simple fix would do a lot to eradicate griefing as we know it. They wouldn't even have to show us the real IP, for security's sake, you could just show an encoded version of it (something like fhqwhgadszhqfd.ipt.aol.com) and allow us to ban based on hostmask...

Ah, but there i go with IRC nolstagia again

I think LL is telling everyone that joined before June 2006 not to trust, or deal with anyone after June 2006.

SL is changing soooo dramatically so quickly... and not in a good direction...

LL says they stay out of resident affairs.... but they are switching the rules on us residents constantly!!

LL are tech geeks.... LL, hire someone to actually RUN SL!!!!! Not maintain it.... LL, it is obvious that you can create a world, but you have no idea how to run it. So many unfortunate decisions LL has been making lately. And it's also obvious, LL cares more for baiting the new user than caring for their long-term clients. LL seems to now be operating in a 'turn-and-burn' fasihon... get em in with warm open arms, get em spending and investing fast, and then get em out...

Second Life an internet clip joint? no.

I for one have found a new love for my depressing real life...

I can detail an exact doomsday senario for this new registration process, all it would take is a laptop and a lot of old 802.11B wifi cards:

Step 1. get SL capable laptop (may be existing inventory)
Step 2. buy a lot of say 10 802.11B cards on e-bay
Step 3. go to e-cafe, McDonalds, coffee shop, etc... with free Wifi
Step 4. Plug in wifi card 1
Step 5. install SecondLife
Step 6. create account, untrackable, untracable
Step 7. drop a script in prim A to set it's script pin
Step 8. drop a script in prim B to move and rez prim A, give it the script and move some more, maybe a time delayed physical reaction after a couple of days.
Step 9. log out, consider account dead
Step 10. 'forget' wifi card, it's used, and likewise, dead
Step 11. move to a new place
Step 12. repeat from step 4 until out of wifi cards, replacing wifi card with new one at each installation

Assuming registration is left naked and helpless, this will work enough to create a big problem when the time delay expires and they all start kicking in.

As well as the fact that the same person would be able to log in from home, and, if quiet, watch his work.

FBI can't do anything because there's fake data.
LL can't do anything because they can't trace the user.
Users can't do anything because something crashed hard.

Tada, doomsday senario, cost... probobly 100 bucks at 'buy now' (or less) provided the perp owns a laptop able to run SL.

I used to think that the more people you have the better.
But now I'm remembering the dot coms in the 90's. Got to big to fast. And poof.

New senario:

Person 1, for some reason dislikes Person 2 enough to actually spend time making them misurable.

I've seen this setup happen in the past, in various locations.

Person 1 creates oh... 100 alts... or so, give or take.
Person 2 sits blissfully unaware person 1 is prepairing for war.

Step 1. Head to any major metropolitan area where you can get good hits on a few wifi hotspots, that SL capable laptop again, and the stack of NICs again (may not even need stack of NICs with a method to change MAC addresses, though if on a wifi the IP is host NAT not the individual system anyway)
Step 2. park somewhere with good signal to at least 4, maybe 5 unsecured hotspots
Step 3. Watermellon gun, find and shoot person 2, get parcel banned
wash rinse, repeat until person 2 figures out what's going on and IP bans...
Step 4. switch hotspots, repeat from step 3, move if you run out of banned hotspots

If Person 1 is a wifi wardriver, the war could exceed the ban list.
Cost of aquisition of the accounts needed for this would have been cost of aquiring a gift credit card or prepaid phone chip. Now it's the cost of a minute needed to read the turing test.

Result: Person 2 has no recourse once the banlist is filled up, Person 1 is laughing as he shuts off his laptop and heads home to log back in his (unused) main account.

Those who know me know that I spend most of my time isolated on private islands these days, but my two cents that probably only have so much to do with the OP (so I don't have to start yet another a new thread).

No online or real world venue will ever be 100% secure. Real security is pretty much an illusion. But what security you can get is still a good thing.

Think of Second Life like an appartment complex and the internet like a city.

I happen to live in a gated comples (in rooms my school leases out for its students because they don't have their own dorm buildings yet.) It's nice, fairly clean, in a good part of town and boasts a "crime-free" area (they don't let people with criminal histories rent there.) There's a police office on the property. This would be like "SL with identity validation".

Now, if you stop to think about it, it's still incredibly easy to get in and do bad things. Sometimes the gate (which closes at 7pm) breaks. Even if it's working as normal, you can still get in by waiting for another car to go in and punch the code to open it, then follow right behind them. And anyone with average upper body strength can vault over the low fence (I've seen people who are presumably residents or friends of residents do it in broad daylight). SL in the past hasn't been much different.

But the alternitive in this case is an appartment complex in the middle of the city, open to all the unwashed masses and all that come by for good or ill (and I'd say that's now a lot of SL members precieve the rest of the internet, citing places like AOL and Myspace as examples.) And the higher profile you have on the internet, the more you move into the "bad part of town". The MUCK I used to be an admin on had a playerbase of about 3000 (including alts which were unlimited) and somewhere around 100 concurent players at peak times. We had unlimited alts and almost no verification (except for IP bans, and staff members were usualy around to help in character creation and that would filter some people out). But we were small enough to be below the interest of a lot of people so we only had infrequent incidents.

From the sound of things, it seems that a lot of SL residents would rather have the gated community.

Richard Bartle's well known theories of MMO player types (Explorer, socializer, achiver and killer) also states that as the environment becomes more favorable to some types, others start to leave. Many (not all) "killer" types are greifers. ("Killers use the virtual construct to cause distress on other players, and gain satisfaction from inflicting anxiety and pain on others." - http://www.nickyee.com/facets/bartle.html) Achievers (those who are in it mostly to acquire "points" don't get along well with the socializers and so on. When the virtual world gets an influx of "killers", almost everybody else starts hurting.

Sometimes it actualy pays to *not* target the mass market. I learned in my entrapaunership class that some business don't *want* or need to advertise. Some don't even put up signs in front of their buildings. Instead, they prosper because they serve a particular market (say, repairing used cars for retailers who sell them) and establish a reputation as the place to go to have the job done. EVE Online has a fraction of the playerbase of WoW, but have one of the most newbie-friendly communities I've seen in an MMO. Gated complexes can charge higher rates for living there because people are willing to pay a bit more for at least the perception of security. (Gee, isn't that part of the appeal of Azure Islands and most other island rental communities, Adam? *Disclaimer: I'm doing building work for Adam and Co.)

Edit: realized there was a link to Bartle's paper: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

Clarifications: Achivers in a social MUD often translate to "people who regard building as a competitive act, and can vie to have the "best" rooms": Second life has other permutations of that including the businesspeople types, but the idea is the same. Killers tend to decreate the number of achivers and socializers in a world (the two groups that make up the most important parts of SL) but don't have a big effect on "explorer" types.

My senarios by themselves are perhaps isolated incidents, but over time, it could affect SL as a whole. I already see a decline in attatude among people I know, a safe spot is gone and someone thrust the internet in all it's horrid glory at them.

These senarios are to some extent prophecies, some extent observations. Where, I won't draw the line, but I will say that if major ammounts of revenue get disturbed from honest people who decide to quit or (and this is an observation of some of my friends by myself,) get driven to leaving SL, taking decent content with them. SL's extended and stable growth spell has potential of being met with a very nasty dotcom type crash.

I just observe, and I wish I had better observations here.